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 Originally Posted by OngBonga
It's difficult to even begin to understand how an emergent property that "kinda doesn't exist" at the quantum scale can be so fundamental to the way our universe works.
Unfortunately, the most common explanation out there is that statistically, the higher entropy states are more common, therefore more likely.
Like, if you have 100 people flip a coin 4 times, you can accurately guess that 6 or 7 of people will flip 4 heads. Likewise, 6 or 7 will flip 4 tails. Whereas, you can guess that about 38 people will flip 2 heads and 2 tails.
The number of states where things are "evenly distributed" is much higher than the number of states where everything is ordered or clumped.
This was an example with only 4 particles in 2 states. When you take the number of ways the air molecules can arrange themselves in a room, the vast majority of the states are near thermodynamic equilibrium, and a state such as "all the air is only in the left half of the room" is vanishingly unlikely.
This argument basically says, "given all the ways it could possibly happen, it tends to be the most likely ways that it happens." which is fine.
What I don't like is the assertion that improbable things don't happen. You can rigorously calculate the probability of those "uncommon macrostates" and show the probability is non-0.
The argument we pose is basically, "It definitely happens." and the conclusion we draw is, "So that's why it doesn't happen."
I can't even understand how an otherwise intelligent physicist can say this out loud in good faith, but I've heard that argument so many times.
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